Maybe if I think about that enough, I won’t get caught up in the way he moves on the ice, or the warm surprise in his eyes when he talks to me, even though he has no business letting me get away with the things I have.
I’m still not sure why he’s allowing it. Or why he told me he was going to be away for the entire day. It’s like he wants me to break into his apartment.
Some part of me wonders if Donovan wants to die.
There’s nothing to kill when I go into his apartment the next day after I watch him leave for his game. I’m quick, rifling through his closet to get the empty shell he talked about for his mask, though I wish I could find the other one and burn it.
I do take a little more time when I snap photos of his posters. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the fact that they’re sentimental to him, even if I don’t understand it.
My mother didn’t leave me posters—she left me the memories of her brain spattered on the wall, the pattern of blood as it slipped down the white paint.
She left me with the artistic monster that lives just beneath my skin and craves the taste of copper.
And…
Maybe that doesn’t mean I can relate to Donovan, but I can at least understand that what a parent leaves behind shapes who we are.
As I’m turning to go, something catches my eye. I frown as I make my way into the kitchen and stop in front of his refrigerator. There, pressed and smoothed flat and hung in a neat little row with magnets…
It’s the sketches I did at the diner.
All the imperfect little angles of Donovan that didn’t quite do him justice.
My first impulse is to tear them down and take them with me… but the longer I stare, the more my fingers seem unwilling to move.
My art is hanging in apartments and expensive houses, in studios in California. A few clients have bought enough that they must have entire rooms of my art on display.
And knowing that doesn’t touch the way it makes me feel to see that Donovan probably spent an hour smoothing out the careless crumples I’d made in these fucking napkins.
“Ridiculous,” I grumble beneath my breath, but I leave them where they are and lock the apartment behind me as I go.
Once I have the shell back in my makeshift studio, it’s almost painfully obvious that it isn’t something that belongs here. I have canvas, I have paint. I have the little projects I’m working on for the class I’m signed up to start helping with for a community credit.
This is different, though; it doesn’t belong in this room. Still, I can already imagine what it’s going to look like when Donovan slips it on. When I close my eyes, there’s a momentary flash of red—red on white, blood on walls, a perfect distraction from a dead face beside me—and then I can see it. Lines of red and black, not an exact replica of the posters on his walls, but something reminiscent.
My eyes flick to my paint, and I bypass the bottles I already have mixed, a few that are running dangerously low at this point. Those remind me of how Ihaven’tfollowed through with what I need to do with Donovan.
Instead, I pick up a clean palette.
It’s easy to tell myself that I’m making sure Donovan looksgood, because if I want to turn him into art, he has to be the perfect subject.
It’s just odd to realize that I already know I’m lying to myself.
A few hours later and I’m almost finished. Working on the plate soothed the restlessness inside me, just enough to take the edge off. I know it won’t last, but maybe seeing Donovan in something that doesn’t look like it fell into a box of Crayola will help.
I just need to add some finishing touches… and as I stare at the carefully detailed snake—streaks of black, green, and red, with eyes that are still hollow and unpainted—I know what I’m going to do before I do it.
I reach for my knife, and it’s only a small flash of pain to cut my arm. My blood mixes with the darker red of the paint one droplet at a time, and when the mixture shifts colors as I swirl, I let out a small sigh, a strange mixture of feeling content and confused.
I don’t use my own blood to paint. I haven’t since I was young. And yet…
The thought of Donovan on the ice, wearing my work and covered inmyblood without realizing it… Fuck. I like it. I really,reallylike it.
It’s enough to send little zips of arousal snaking along my spine as I get back to work.
All the little places that my blood mixes with the paint are possibility—a moment where Donovan might somehow realize that there’s something different about the little splashes of red on his helmet. I’m very careful when I mix my paint. I’ve sold dozens of canvasses with my dirty little secret streaked in crimson lines.
This is the first time I’ve ever made my own blood part of the equation.
